Kerala: Charge-sheet filed in Latvian tourist’s rape

The Kerala Police on Wednesday filed the charge-sheet in the murder of a Latvian woman tourist at Kovalam, naming two local drug peddlers as the accused.

The 77-page charge-sheet was filed before the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court at nearby Neyyattinkara by Assistant Commissioner (Fort) J.K. Dinil, who led the investigation.

The Latvian tourist had gone missing under mysterious circumstances from Kovalam on March 14. Her highly decomposed headless body was recovered from a mangrove forest at nearby Thiruvallam on April 21.

According to the charge-sheet, the two accused persons—Umesh and Udayan—had lured the Latvian woman, who got stranded in the mangrove forest, by offering her drugs and promising to take her around.

The victim fell into a stupor and was later raped, the charge-sheet said.

After regaining consciousness, the victim reacted strongly, following which she was strangled to death and her body was disposed deliberately to destroy evidence, it said.

“Umesh and Udayan have been charged under IPC Sections 302 (murder), 376 (rape) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) and provisions of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act,” Dinil told PTI.

The two men were arrested on May 3.

The charge-sheet contains the statements of 104 witnesses and 102 supportive documents.

The disappearance and subsequent murder of the tourist, who had come to Kerala for Ayurveda treatment along with her sister, had triggered widespread controversy in the state with allegations that the Kerala Police had not conducted a proper probe into the woman’s death.